The Coop

Do you need to donate to OCR to get the remixes hosted here? No, you don't. They're free day in, day out. The donations in the past (I believe April is the donation month for the last few years) are to the site, and the site alone. You got nothing for donating, outside of the knowledge that you helped OCR pay for its running costs; no rewards, no gifts, nothing. This fundraiser is vastly different, because the physical album is gotten for a $50 donation to the kickstarter. Sure, the physical album would have been given out for free at various functions that OCR attended later on, but it still would have been printed using the money from the fund drive. And THAT is the point of contention in the eyes of some. Not the MP3s that will eventually be hosted on the site, the physical album, and how it was paid for. That's where licensing comes in to cover the butts of all those involved with the physical album's release. - When I've been talking about the fundraiser/FFVI/licensing issue, I've been talking about the physical album. Not the MP3s and other digital media that would have been put on the OCR website, the physical album that was going to be produced using money from the kickstarter. Nothing more. If you thought otherwise, then my apologies for not making that clearer. - To the best of my knowledge, the previous albums were never sold, nor were they a selling point for a fundraiser. They only got released on the website (and mirroring sites/torrents), free for everyone to download, and that was that. As such, no licensing was required because no money was required to get an item/download. - Square-Enix, and indeed, any IP holder whose music has been remixed, would be perfectly within their rights to request that OCR no longer host music based on their respective IPs. So if Konami decided that they didn't want Castlevania remixes on here anymore, they could draw up a C&D or what have you, and tell djp to remove the music in question, or face legal consequences. Maybe they'd win in court, maybe djp would win. But it's Konami's IP being used as a source material, and they can defend it however they wish (regardless of how frivolous it comes across). OCR continues to host free remixes through the good graces of IP holders. In fact, those who make remixes in general are able to put them out there for free for the same reason. Not because they're untouchable by law, but because the companies (for the moment) don't really have an issue with it as long as it's free. But when money starts being handed over to gain a physical item filled with remixes, or to download an MP3 remix, then things get hairier, and the chances of lawyers getting involved goes up. That's when it gets easier for a company to see it as people making money off of their IP, without their permission. Then you potentially get projects being shut down, and small children weeping openly in the streets as dismay fills their hearts.

Money changing hands, changes everything. With Square-Enix, they've shown they're more than willing to shut down a free project if they feel one of their IPs is threatened, and the staff at OCR was sporting a FFVI album as a reward for donating to the kickstarter fund. That got the attention of someone, and the end result was Square-Enix hitting the proverbial pause button on the kickstarter. If you require money to be exchanged for something, you're likely to be seen as having sold that something. There was monetary gain made, regardless of why (charity, fund drive, etc.). At that point, a company is far more likely to intervene on behalf of their IP, than if the something in question was being freely handed out. That's why when money's involved, many will approach the owner of the IP and ask to have permission, in writing, to do what they had in mind. "Weird Al" does it all the time, even though he's not required to thanks to the rules behind parody works. He does it to cover his ass legally, and out of respect for the original artists. And when it comes to remixes and money changing hands, especially when the source of the project is a relatively well known one (like OCR), it's a good practice to adhere to. zircon kindly explained the hows and whys when it comes to getting a licensing agreement with Square-Enix for the kickstarter. Yes, some feel that if they didn't have one, the album shouldn't have been included, due to the way Square-Enix has behaved in the past with IP protection; they feel it was a mistake to go ahead with the album reward without such an agreement in place. But those of us who feel that way, and have made remixes that are freely available here or elsewhere, aren't being hypocritical in the least. Why? Because the site hosting remixes for free, and someone making a remix and putting it up for people to listen to for free, is not the same as the site/person handing out a remix/album in exchange for money (be it selling outright, or as a gift for donating). The former will likely be overlooked. The latter, stands a much greater chance of ending with a C&D order from the IP owner.

Ah, I see. However, that beg's one last question; if you didn't have the music done, and thus had no way to try and get a licensing agreement, why put it in as a major draw for the kickstarter in the first place? I know it was a great reward, but didn't it feel like putting a bull's eye on the fund raiser, given Squenix's past actions? ... OK, so there are technically two questions there.

How come you guys didn't set a limit on how many copies of the album were going to be produced? You know, make it "first come, first served." Sure, it would have potentially limited the number of people willing to give $50 or more, but then you would have had the number needed to approach Square-Enix in terms of copies being potentially given out, and avoided everything that's happening now. Plus, if the funds kept coming in readily (after the albums had all been claimed), you could have tried to renegotiate behind the scenes with Squenix about increasing the album count. Or perhaps negotiated a set number of albums per $1000 raised from the beginning? I know all this is after the fact, and some of what I've said likely comes off as, "No shit, Captain Obvious" commentary. But I guess I'm just surprised that after how thorough everyone on the site staff was about getting a nice and official contract agreement drawn up between OCR and the hosted remixers, that you guys went forward with the album reward idea with no agreement between OCR and Square-Enix.

Looks like my speculative hunch in the other thread a week ago was quite correct. Someone did indeed catch wind of it, and didn't like it. Not surprising at all, though, especially considering the amount of cash that was raised, and whose IP was being used (a company who's somewhat notorious for shutting down fan projects). But to be completely honest, who didn't see this coming? People donate $50 and get a produced CD of FFVI remixes, without any kind of licensing deal with Square-Enix. Sure, it wasn't specifically selling the CD outright, but it was a big selling point for donating, and it was still money changing hands for those donating $50 or more. And for companies in general who look out for their IPs to the level Squenix has over the years, that's close enough to warrant taking action. So while the idea was a great one, I can't help but think someone dropped the legal ball on that one during the planning stages. This really should have been seen coming, even if the donation drive hadn't garnered so much cash. Now the question is, will a deal be made to allow this to keep going, or will the kickstarter have to be... well, rekickstarted (sans remixes of course)?

Inversion.

As a final recommendation before this whole thing ends, grab Bastion if you can. It's a stylish little action RPG with an interesting narrative element that weaves through the game, with great graphics, nice audio, solid controls and a pretty decent story. You'll definitely get your $4 worth.

If anyone's interested in Legend of Grimrock, get it soon. For how many times it came up in this sale, I doubt it'll see another sale for a good while. It's worth the $6, and is a good example of bringing oldschool dungeon crawling into the more visually advanced world of modern gaming. Long enough to get your money's worth, but not drawn out or tedious. Plus, if it runs on my old P4 3.00Ghz, 7800 GS PC, you've got a good shot at running it if your specs aren't quite up to what's listed in the requirements section.

I hate to say it but... well, I won't. A potential Star Wars sale always brings in a metric fuckton of attention, no matter how many times that given game's gone on sale. Too bad we can't wave our hand in front of them all and say, "This is not the game you're looking for."

Perhaps the nature of what was being given away as rewards caught the attention of someone (be it on Kickstarter or elsewhere)?

Don't tase him, bro!

You realize that there's no chance in hell of it winning against that Star Wars game, right? There are way more Star Wars nuts than there are Ys followers. I mean, I voted for Ys Origins, but...

A few months ago, I got a new XBox game, fired it up, and played for a bit. Things seemed reasonably fine at the time, though I did notice a bit of stuttering. However, I recently got myself another game, only now, I'm having all sorts of constant problems. Things like... - It takes a good 40-60 seconds to get from the XBox boot up logo, to the menu screen for managing memory, music, and what have you. - It takes about a minute to bring up all my game saves in the memory manager. - The background audio stutters and repeats constantly like a glitchy loop on the menu screens, and none of the animations are smooth anymore. They're jerky, and show maybe one frame of some kind of animation change before it suddenly jumps to the next screen. - Games take a good minute or more before they come up after popping them in. - Loading simple things like save menus in a game takes 20-30 seconds (in Doom 3: Resurrection of Evil, it takes a minute just to bring up the pause menu). None of these kinds of things took so long before. Basically, is my XBox's hard drive about to die? Is the CPU about fried? This started up seemingly out of nowhere yesterday, and it seems to be a bit worse today, so I'd appreciate some feedback.

Walking Dead

Well, there are twelve days for this sale, so... Anyway, took a chance on the flash sale, and surprise surprise... F.3.A.R. not only runs, it can be run on Medium settings. Go figure.

I haven't spent much money this time around, as frankly, most of the games I want won't run on my PC... as in, not even be compatible with my graphics card. Sonic Generations, Skyrim, F.3.A.R., The Witcher 2 (though I can run the first game fine on Medium settings), Dead Island (though there is a video on YouTube with someone running it on a PC not much better than mine), Dungeons & Dragons: Daggerdale, Hunted: The Demon's Forge... it's almost disheartening to see my old P4 3.00 GHz CPU and 7800 GS being left utterly behind. So, I've just grabbed Half-Life 2 Episodes 1 and 2 ($1.99 each), Legend of Grimrock ($5.99... big spender on this one), and Trine 2 ($3.74). I'm waiting to see if Satazius and Razor2: Hidden Skies goes on a flash sale or something before the 22nd. I'm wanting them, but we'll see about any possible special deals first.

Keep in mind, the next two paragraphs are addressing only the EC stuff... Simple; because that's not what the fund was for. The fund was for Allison, her lost wages, her recovery/therapy, medical expenses, and hiring a few artists to help the show while she was getting better. Helping indie gamers doesn't factor into that at all. It wasn't the project goal, and wasn't a part of the project until well after they'd gotten what they needed (if I recall, they had something like $50,000 or $60,000 by the time the publishing thing came up). Sure, people can give as they see fit. No argument from me on that point. But you always... ALWAYS... plan for the worst (not meeting your goal), hitting your target, and exceeding your goal. You let people know ahead of time what will happen, instead of just winging it after it happens. If you do that from the get go, then people don't get thoughts about... well, thoughts like what's going on in this thread. EC didn't think it through, and it led to drama between them, The Escapist and so forth. Of course, that's just my stance on what took place back then. Now, I personally don't have an issue with what's going on with the OCR fund. I have faith in the ability of the staff to not start clamoring for every dime that they can hang on to with a death grip while purchasing a six inch-tall gold statue of the Nice Work Guy for every room in DJP's house. But at the same time, I can understand why some eyebrows got raised here when the numbers kept climbing. The ways the extra funds will be used here are far more in line with the fundraiser than what EC did, but that people raised their hands to ask a question (or ten) isn't outlandish in my book. The tone of the questions certainly wasn't always very friendly, but...

She (he?) needs to buy some shampoo and a pair of sheep shearers for that helmet of hair.

Sounds like you have the same issue with this fund raiser, that I had with Extra Credits' Rockethub drive to help their artist, Allison, get the needed operation on her shoulder. They asked for $15,000, and got a bit over $100,000. The extra money then became a kind of indie game publisher project, which was WAY off from the original point of the fund raiser, and didn't sit well with me at all.

I'm not that familiar with Motoi's newer stuff, as I mostly heard his 16-bit soundtracks in games like Earnest Evans, Sol-Deace, Arcus Odyssey and Granada on the Genesis. He used the same basic sound fonts for his music, which made his OSTs stand out because of their familiar feel going from game to game. Of course, there was also the fact that the OSTs contained good music with catchy beats and such, but that's beside the point